Although producers often try their best to be mindful on the farm, it’s safe to say that protection, protocols, and precautions aren’t always top of mind and are occasionally bypassed altogether in the name of speed, efficiency, or force of habit. To draw attention to the importance of safety on the farm, the Province has declared this week as Agriculture Safety Week in Saskatchewan.
Zachary Hango grew up on a grain farm outside of Handel, Saskatchewan, and he is currently in his third year of the Agriculture Technology program at Lakeland College in Vermillion. A farm boy at heart, his involvement on the family grain farm has always been quite high, always lending a hand with seeding, swathing, combining, hauling water, or in the particular case of July 11, 2025, hauling grain.
Hango says he was by himself pulling grain out of an old flat bottom bin, which didn’t have its own bin sweep, something he had done hundreds of times before. When the first bin was empty, he went to move the bin sweep down the line into the bin beside it, but one step backward into a running auger put a wrench in his plan.
“My foot slipped, and my left foot went into the auger, which took a pretty good chunk off the top of my foot.”
Luckily, both Hango’s parents and grandparents were at the house nearby, and a quick phone call to his dad meant a makeshift ratchet strap tourniquet was around his leg in minutes.
His mom proceeded to call 911, and the STARS Air Ambulance arrived shortly after to take him to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
“Shoutout to CJ and Rene, the guys who were in the helicopter with me,” Hango acknowledge with a laugh.
Upon landing, Hango was informed that he would need to have his foot amputated up to his mid-calf, a procedure that ended up taking place the very next day. After a week in the hospital, in typical Zach fashion, and with a new prosthetic in tow, he didn’t let the ‘minor’ adjustment get him down for long.
“It’s actually quite funny, cause when I got out of the hospital on the Friday, there was a two-ball golf night in Wilkie, so I got to make it to that,” he chuckled.
By sharing his story, Hango says he hopes to convey the message that something like this can happen to anyone, regardless of how long they’ve been doing it, or how careful they’ve been in the past.
“Even something as small as shutting the auger off, shutting the PTO off on the tractor, all that stuff (can make a difference). It’s definitely the little stuff that counts. I realized that, especially after the accident.”
For more information on farm safety resources, including the Farm Safety Guide, visit the government’s website. To learn more about Canadian Agricultural Safety Week, visit their website.
